SK Telecom beefs up network core to gear up for 6G

[Courtesy of SK Telecom]

South Korea’s top mobile carrier SK Telecom Co. is strengthening its network core to gear up for increasing communication traffic and the sixth generation (6G) of mobile communications.

SK Telecom announced Tuesday that it will commercially introduce a 400 gigabyte per second (Gbps) wired network for its 5G telecommunications network core. Gbps measures the amount of information transmitted per second, with SK Telecom launching an ultra-high-capacity wireline network that can handle 400Gbps, up from the 100Gbps of the existing network.

“We decided to introduce a 400Gbps wired network to prepare for future increases in services that require large quantities of communication data traffic, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the metaverse, as well as the expansion of the communication network to come with 5G advancements and 6G commercialization,” SK Telecom said. The company also plans to reduce the number of wired networks connecting to the backbone via the 400Gbps wired network, to improve network management efficiency and establish a system that can quickly respond to breakdowns or failures.

SK Telecom has completed the application of the new technology in the backbone network connecting Seongsu and Boramae and will expand this application to all backbones nationwide after further testing and monitoring.

“We are now prepared for the increased traffic following 5G’s commercialization, as well as the large volume of traffic that will be generated by 5G upgrades and 6G commercialization,” according to Lee Jong-hoon, vice president and head of infrastructure engineering at SK Telecom.